LDRSHIP: The Seven Core Values
by Cold Ember
Summary: Colby thinks back on the Seven Core Values of the Army and how they relate to his work undercover. Oneshot.


A Colby-centric fic based around the 7 Core Values of the United States Army. Deals mainly with the events of _The Janus List_ and _Trust Metric_, though it also involves various other episodes, particularly from season 4.

Big thanks to my wonderful beta, VanishingP200.

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LDRSHIP: The Seven Core Values

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They had been pounded into his head since Basic, reiterated time and again, told that these seven things would be the most important things in the world during their time in the Army. It was strange, though, because his greatest test of his devotion to them had come not during his enlistment but after his discharge.

_Loyalty_

His loyalty had been tested, questioned, denied. Loyalty to everything, not just his country but his friends and his mission. His loyalty to each in a constant struggle with the others. Loyalty to Dwayne was overpowered by loyalty to his country and later loyalty to his mission. Loyalty to his country and his mission had been sorely tested during the long, cold nights in the jail cell, though not as much as when he saw the look in David's eyes in the interrogation room. He had almost cracked then and there, given up the entire op to them, but he didn't because ultimately he knew that he would not be able to live with himself if he took the easy way out of this assignment. Loyalty to his friends had ultimately triumphed when he had called Charlie and put his fate in the hands of those who believed him a traitor. He just hoped that they knew when all was said and done that they had his loyalty.

_Duty_

It had been his duty to undertake the operation. His duty to help ferret out the DOJ mole. His duty to betray Dwayne, though perhaps Dwayne deserved it. Dwayne had, after all, already violated the first rule of loyalty when he shifted his to the Chinese. It was his duty to betray the rest of his team who were innocent bystanders, with whom no blame lay for Dwayne's actions. His duty had forced him to deceive them and hurt them. He had questioned the price of doing his duty many times throughout his two years with the team while he was undercover, but he had continued with the mission anyway. Hoping that somehow it would end up alright, the chance of which was highly improbable, as Charlie might say.

_Respect_

Respect. Respect for what, exactly? The official tagline to go with this was the grade school saying, the golden rule: treat others as they should be treated. Perhaps Dwayne deserved his betrayal for everything that he had done. Maybe that was the way that he should have been treated. David, Charlie, Megan, Don and Liz certainly didn't deserve to feel the sting of his betrayal for those five weeks. And he still wasn't sure that he deserved their forgiveness. Or their valiant and heroic efforts to find him and save him from Lancer. In fact, he very much doubted that he did.

_Selfless Service_

If by selfless service they mean that you should destroy yourself, your life for the good of a mission then yeah, he had selfless service covered. Or maybe not. Because it had been selfish to get so involved with the rest of the team when he knew that it was based around a lie. A lie with good intentions, perhaps, but a lie nonetheless. Had he been selfless he would have been more distant with them, would not have let himself get so close. He would have skipped some of the team's outings, not hung out with David so often, not spent so much time watching games with David and Don, not gone to so many of the team poker nights at Megan's, not accepted so many of Alan's dinner invitations. It might have caused them annoyance at his apparent aloofness, but it would have ultimately saved them a great deal of pain- it's far easier to believe someone a traitor and cut all emotional ties if you didn't particularly like them to begin with. But he had gotten close because he liked them. They were good people, people with whom he enjoyed spending time and if he was honest with himself, he wasn't actually all that sorry that he had gotten so close. Had he not gotten so close to them, he might be dead. You don't try quite as hard or bend nearly a many rules to save someone when you didn't like them in the first place, either.

_Honor_

He didn't even know if he had honor anymore. He was pretty sure that he used to, back before Dwayne had taken a wreaking ball to everything he had worked so hard to achieve- being someone that his father would have been proud of- and knocked it all down by coming to him and imploring him to turn spy for the Chinese. He heard his superiors telling him that his actions had been honorable, but the voice in his head scoffed at that. There was no honor in espionage, no matter how noble the cause might be.

Espionage was the bottom of the pond no matter how you looked at it- it was the stealing of that which you could not obtain legally, spying on those whom you had no right to watch, skirting around the edges of everything that he believed in. He believed in the criminal justice system, believed in the laws the required actual evidence, probable cause to watch a person, to go through their things. Not that he didn't think they could have gotten a warrant for many of the things that they had done, they just hadn't. And no matter how much he might tell himself that it was for a better cause, he couldn't ever shake the feeling that he was a part of the mockery of the justice system that he believed so strongly in. He had even found that mindset of not needing a reason to search or seize something seeping into his FBI work for a short while before realizing what he was doing and reining that side of him in to the point where he didn't have it when he really needed it.

_Integrity_

Do what's right, both legally and morally. That's what they always told him and his fellow soldiers. They never quite got to the part about what to do when the legally right clashes directly with the morally right. What to do when right and wrong isn't black and white but the law is. What to do when the law puts something clearly in either the black or white and morality leaves it somewhere in the grey area. Or vice versa. At the end of the day, did he still have integrity if he chose legal virtue over moral virtue? At what point does the line between right and wrong become so blurred and the contradictions between the morality and legality so great that it no longer matters what you do because you'll always be wrong anyway. That was his great paradox, the one that no one ever prepared you for because it was the absolute worst case scenario, the one that no one wanted to think about. They said that they prepared for the worst and hoped for the best, but no one ever really prepares you for the _worst_, because when the honest to god worst happens, you're royally screwed.

_Personal Courage_

I like to think that, out of all seven, this is the one that I have been most successful at living up to. I like to think that I'll always be willing to take a bullet for someone or run into a burning building for someone or undertake ridiculously dangerous, top secret undercover operations. I like to think that I don't run away from danger, that I face it head on and looking back on my actions throughout my adult life, both in the Army and as an FBI agent, I believe that I have. In fact, I've been told on occasion that my actions often tread, and occasionally jump, the line between brave and stupid. Megan told me recently that I was getting dumber with my safety and I have to wonder if maybe putting myself on the line is my way of attempting to atone for my sins, for the pain I've caused and the scars I've left.

But at the end of the day I know that no matter how many times I push civilians to safety at the expense of my own, no matter how many injuries I accumulate from the pursuit of protecting others, it will never make up for the things that I do. Because for every trip to the Emergency room and every on site visit with the paramedics, there are several dead bodies to match. People who are dead because of me. Usually bad guys, yes, but people nonetheless. I've killed too many men and ruined too many lives to hope for redemption, no matter how righteous the reason. But still, I have to hope that somehow I'm doing the right thing and even if I can't save myself, at least I can try to save other people before I fall.

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End file.
